Neighborhood Holiday Parade?
December 12, 2020
We just completed our 2020 “Santa Runs” through the neighborhood and, after lots of discussion, we think it’s time to make some changes to our annual community celebration.
Even after our best attempts to inform folks on Santa’s schedule, through websites, neighborhood timelines and “Santa Tracking” software, it still appears that we are not able to make sure that everyone gets to say “Hi” to Santa as he flies through the district. Many folks were even driving around trying to catch up to Santa because they missed him going by.
Instead of driving the entire neighborhood, we would like to change the event and create a Neighborhood Holiday Parade. This would include all emergency service organizations (Fire, EMS, Sheriff’s, Constables, etc.), community groups (car clubs, motorcycle clubs, etc.), neighborhood associations, schools and anyone else who wants to participate (folks who just want to be in the parade!). The proposed route would start at Forest North Elementary School parking lot, parade south down Broadmeade to Anderson Mill, Anderson Mill to Amasia, Amasia to Tamayo, Tamayo to Elkhorn Mountain and finish at Hunters Chase Park. This way, everyone will know the route, not have to worry about timelines and groups could gather along the path, celebrate the holidays and wave to Santa!
After such amazing successes with the neighborhood and school graduation parades this year and the wonderful community involvement for these events, we think this is the best way to move forward with our “Santa Runs” tradition. Even this year, we had a large group of bicyclists trailing behind Santa’s Sleigh for a while, creating a mini-parade. It seems they wanted to start the new tradition early!
What we need to do is start planning this new process as soon as possible. We would like to get this proposal out to all of the groups who may want to be involved and see what level of involvement we would be looking at. Then, JVFD would coordinate the event and create a “Holiday Parade” email group so we can all keep up to date with new information.
Traditions are always fun and sad to alter but sometimes they need to change with the times. We believe that the parade format for this event will best benefit the entire community, allow for planned routes, timelines and a lot more involvement with the entire neighborhood.